'WE COULD HAVE BROUGHT A BODY BACK'
Lifeboat skipper’s chilling warning after a man in a tiny toy dinghy floated miles out to sea – as we enter deadliest month on Britain’s beaches
A MAN who drifted miles out to sea in a tiny toy dinghy had to be rescued by lifeboat crews last night who warned they could have "brought a dead body back".
The man, believed to be in his 30s and wearing a hoodie and shorts, barely fitted in the child's inflatable toy.
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Dramatic footage shows crews speeding towards the tiny red dinghy, which has started to deflate and fill with water, before pulling the man aboard.
Lifeboat crews said he was trying to paddle against the wind but kept drifting further away from the shore.
Passers-by raised the alarm just after 7.30pm after spotting him near a wind farm off the coast of Redcar, North Yorks.
Redcar RNLI's Dave Cocks said: "If the alarm hadn't been raised there was every likelihood he'd have drifted out of sight of land and we could well have been bringing a dead body back.
"He was bigger than the dinghy so his feet were hanging over the edge.
"This is a good example of the types of incident we repeatedly warn people about."
August is the deadliest month for swimmers, with 122 people dying at sea during the month over the past five years, reports .
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Last year saw 31 coastal deaths in the UK in the month of August, a 55 per cent increase from the year before.
Five of those were at Camber Sands, East Sussex, where a group of pals drowned after playing volleyball in the sea.
Despite being strong swimmers, an inquest heard the men were dragged to their deaths by a powerful riptide.
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